


Turnabout

by melimarron



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Ben Parker Dies, Ben Parker Lives, Ben Parker is Peter Parker's Paternal Figure, Ben Parker is Spider-Man, Ben Parker's POV, F/M, Gen, I use those tags a lot, Jewish Peter Parker, May Parker is Peter Parker's Paternal Figure, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Not Spider-Man: Far From Home Compliant, Not Spider-Man: Homecoming Compliant, Peggy Sue, Spider-Man: Far From Home (Movie) Spoilers, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, as per usual, because paradoxes with time travel are fun, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 09:02:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23348860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melimarron/pseuds/melimarron
Summary: Ben Parker, uncle to Peter Parker, always dies.Always.Fate is sick of it.So Ben Parker is sent back in time the night he died, armed with knowledge of the future, and determined to keep Peter safe.
Relationships: Ben Parker & May Parker (Spider-Man), Ben Parker & May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Ben Parker & Peter Parker, Ben Parker/May Parker (Spider-Man), May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker
Comments: 4
Kudos: 60





	Turnabout

There was a gunshot, and suddenly, everything that had been running through Ben Parker’s mind didn’t matter anymore.

Bang.

_Ow!_

Ben looked down at himself woozily. His shirt was red. That was wrong. He had put on a white shirt this morning. It was one of his favorites. It had a drawing of Iron Man on it- Peter’s work. Peter had drawn it and put the drawing on a shirt for Ben’s birthday a few years ago. It was one of his favorites. Peter would be so upset that he’d ruined it.

Ben reached down and touched the shirt. May would know how to get out the stain. But there was a hole in it, now- a great, big, gaping hole, actually, through the shirt. How had he never noticed-?

Words came through to him, then. Peter. He sounded high-pitched, for some reason.

“Uncle Ben! Uncle Ben!”

Weakness crashed through Ben. Blood was seeping out of him, Peter sounded like he’d swallowed helium for some reason, despite his recent growth spurt, and he’d ruined one of his favorite shirts.

The ground- the ground was suddenly a lot closer than it had been before-

“Peter…” he heard himself mumble, his voice barely louder than a breath.

 _Ow-_ ow, _this hurts. Oh, G-d, this hurts._

“Peter,” he repeated, and blinked. His eyes were heavier than they had been before. “Peter.”

What now? Peter. Peter. Peter was here. Ben turned his eyes to look at his nephew. Peter. He was- he was speaking, now, rapidly, too quickly for Ben to keep up. He was on his phone. Who was he talking to?

_Focus, focus, Ben. Peter. Shirt. Peter’s going to be so mad…_

The effort of keeping his eyes on his nephew was too much. _Have to tell him. Have to tell him… something._

_I’m dying. With great power comes great responsibility._

In another world, in another universe, perhaps Ben Parker would have questioned the words in his mind, never speaking the crystal-clear phrase aloud, too worried about the shirt and how mad Peter would be that he’s ruined it, and knowing that May would probably be a little irritated that he’s ruined it. He’d have to make it up to her.

His lips began to move. “Peter. With great power-”

He coughed. Blood splattered out of his mouth. Where had the blood come from? The hole was in his stomach, not his throat.

Peter was still talking on the phone. He was crying. That was a bit much. _It’s only a shirt, Peter,_ Ben thought.

_Say it. You have to say it._

“With. With great power… Peter. With great power comes great-”

More coughing.

More blood.

_Have to finish. Have to have to have to._

“Comes great responsibility.”

His lips were soaked in blood. Where had it all come from? With great power comes great responsibility. With great power comes great responsibility.

The words didn’t make sense anymore. Responsibility. What a funny word. So many syllables. So meaningless, in the grand scheme of things.

_Peter… Peter. Peter. Remember._

_He’s going to be so mad that I ruined the shirt,_ Ben thought, and the pain overtook him.

* * *

_**Oh, how** _ **boring** _**. Another one? No.** _

* * *

Ben woke up.

That was the first surprise.

The second was the lack of any pain. Ben looked down at himself in amazement. No pain. He tentatively poked himself in the stomach.

No pain.

And his shirt was clean and hole-less! Ben grinned.

_Wait. How is this possible?_

Ben frowned and raised his eyes from his injury-less stomach to look around.

The world around him was faded. Colors that were once sharp had dimmed. The dark night sky was gray. The blood on the ground looked like a pale shade of what it had once been.

_What is going on?_

Information _slammed_ into Ben’s mind. It was like watching several dozen movies all at once, condensed into a single second.

_I am Iron Man._

_With great power comes great responsibility._

_Have you ever seen that really old movie, Star Wars?_

_If you’re nothing without the suit, then you can’t have it._

_Come on, Spider-Man!_

_What the fu-_

_The adults are talking._

_-Don’t feel so good._

_How do I look?_

_Spider-Man- Spider-Man’s real name is Peter Parker!_

Ben fell to his knees. “Oh, shit,” he heard himself say in a strangled voice. “Oh, _shit_!”

* * *

When Ben woke up again, he was in his bed, in Queens, with May sleeping beside him.

_What the hell was that dream?_

When the alarm went off, he got ready for the day in a daze. He picked up the Iron Man shirt Peter had made, shuddered, and put it back.

Breakfast that day was eerily normal. Ben made pancakes, Peter ate most of them, and then the three of them started to clean the kitchen.

As he worked, Ben couldn’t help but feel… odd. Like that dream was more real than he’d thought, like he had really gotten a second chance at life to protect Peter from his own dumb teenage self.

But that was completely ridiculous. There was no way that Peter, the boy who was his son in all but name, could _ever_ be a wall-crawling _superhero_ who took down threats the _Avengers_ couldn’t.

There was just no way.

Peter’s phone buzzed, and he glanced down at it. A second later, his eyes widened. “Yes! Yes!”

“Everything all right, Pete?” Ben asked.

“Ned got the Millennium Falcon set!” Peter said, his excitement radiating off of him. “Can I go can I go can I go can I go-”

Ben remembered that set. Peter had been talking about it nonstop, especially as his birthday got closer and closer.

“I mean, I know I should probably help out, but Ned and I’ve been waiting to build the Millennium Falcon for _so long_ , please, please, can I go?”

Ben exchanged a look with his wife, and then May smiled and waved Peter out. “Go on, have fun with Ned.”

“Ye-es! Thank you, Aunt May! Thank you, thank you, thank you-” Peter was still babbling his thanks as he left, backpack in one hand and phone in the other, practically bouncing out of the apartment.

Ben snorted as his nephew left the apartment, his excitement contagious. His dream flitted back to life in his mind, of Peter being his usual excited self around Tony Stark and the Avengers. His smile dropped, and he started scrubbing harder at the pans. Peter- even a dream version of Peter- shouldn’t have to try to prove himself to be a child soldier. He shouldn’t have to be a child soldier at all.

Part of Dream Peter’s mindset was probably on Dream Ben. _With great power comes great responsibility._ How could he have told his nephew that? That was probably the sentence that fueled Dream Peter’s heroics.

Ben glared down at the pan again and readjusted his grip. _It’s just a dream._

His subconscious had essentially _tortured_ Peter. He groaned out loud. Why was he still dwelling on it? _It was just a_ dream, _Ben, calm down._

May looked up from where she was drying off the pan. “You all right?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Ben groaned, running a soapy hand through his thinning hair. “I just had a really strange dream last night.”

“Yeah? What was it about?”

Ben turned the water on and started to rinse off the spatula. “It started out as a nightmare. I died, I think, and then… well, then things got _really_ weird.”

May listened patiently as the two of them finished cleaning up the kitchen, and continued listening even after Ben got past Thanos and Mysterio.

“And then there was this broadcast, right?” Ben waved his hands around. “It revealed Peter’s identity as Spiderman, and then- I woke up.”

“Pretty detailed dream,” May said.

“Yeah. You know, the dumpster out back really is heaven for spiders. I might go at it with spider repellant today. I mean, that dream just- kind of unsettled me.”

“No skin off my back,” May said. “I’ll take the boys to that concert, if you want.”

“Oh…” Ben had been looking forward to going to a rock concert with Peter and Ned. But that dream had just been too realistic. Unsettlingly so. _Come on, Ben, are you really this upset over a_ dream?

Yes.

Yes, he was.

“All right, go ahead.” Ben injected blatantly false cheer into his voice. “I’m going to see if _I_ can be Spiderman!”

May snorted and kissed Ben’s cheek. “You do that, honey.”

“Wasn’t joking!” Ben called after her as she walked towards their room.

“Sure, Ben, sure.”

* * *

Ben stood outside their home in Queens, bug repellant in one hand and a flyswatter in the other.

In the dream, Peter had gotten bitten when he was taking photos and dumpster diving in the alley behind their apartment. According to the infodump Ben had gotten in said dream, Peter had reached into a box without looking, and the spider, feeling threatened, had bitten the poor boy and turned him into Spiderman.

Ben looked at the dumpster and groaned. He wasn’t half as willing to climb things and shove his limbs into dark spaces as his nephew was. Ben had always lectured Peter on climbing into trash and poking around, saying that he could get bitten by something and get sick.

Well, here he was, Ben Parker, hypocrite and hopefully soon-to-be Spiderman, about to climb into the trash, poke around, and get bitten by something.

Ben was so glad Peter didn’t know about this. The boy would laugh himself silly. He was in for an overall humiliating experience once he confessed this whole adventure.

But saving Peter from all that suffering would be more than worth it.

Holding his breath, Ben clambered into the dumpster.

* * *

It was easier than he had thought it would be to find the spider. According to the dream, it was an escaped mutant spider from some huge tech company. The trouble came when Ben tried to get it to bite him.

Ben looked at the spider. The spider looked at him.

And then, it turned and skittered away into a milk carton.

“Wait!” Ben called after it, uselessly. He scrambled to his feet, nearly slipping on a discarded banana peel. _This is so disgusting._ He had to catch that spider.

Ben lunged for the milk carton, stuck his hand into it, and picked up the spider. _Bite me, bite me, bite me, bite me._ He braced himself, clenching his teeth, and squeezing his eyes shut.

And the stupid incorrigible spider didn’t bite.

“Oh, you've got to be-” Ben snarled, opening his eyes and poking at the spider with his finger. Of all the things he thought could go wrong with his plan, the _spider_ not cooperating was not one of them. He’d threatened the spider by picking it up. Why wasn’t it biting or, at the very least, trying to run away?

Just his luck. He’d picked up the only damn suicidal spider in New York.

How does one even get a spider to bite them anyway? It wasn’t like anyone had ever tried before. Ben had certainly never tried before. The general human etiquette, when it came to spiders, was to either kill it with fire, keep a wary eye on it, or ignore it completely. Nobody was dumb enough to deliberately try to provoke a spider into biting it.

Well, nobody except Ben.

He was suddenly very happy that May had volunteered to take Peter and Ned to the concert. It was a shame he was missing it, true- May wasn’t as much of a fan of rock as he and Peter were- but the lack of witnesses who knew who he was was a boon at the moment.

Ben poked the spider again. Maybe he’d have to… starve it out, or something?

No. That wasn’t an option. There would be too high of a chance that the spider would escape and bite Peter or May.

Ben scowled down at the spider. How was he supposed to aggravate it enough that it would bite him? Was it too much to ask the spider to mutate an adult’s DNA, rather than a child’s?

He poked it again. “ _Bite me,_ you stupid spi-”

With what Ben could have sworn was a wicked gleam in its eight beady little eyes, the spider obliged.

“ _Ow!_ ” Ben shook out his hand, eyes wide. He’d dropped the spider in his pain, and looked around frantically. He spotted the bright red spider and stomped down, squashing it.

 _Ugh._ Ben shook out his hand again. _Damn. How did Peter hide this?_ He curled his fingers into a fist and looked down at the spider bite on the back of his hand. It looked small and harmless now, but if all went well, it would turn him into Spiderman.

 _I hope that was the right red spider,_ Ben thought. He rubbed the spider bite and left the alley. If the bite worked, then he’d finally have proof for May. He wouldn’t have to watch his nephew throwing himself into danger. He could help save the world.

 _If_ the dream was real, that was.

With a newfound spring in his step, Ben went up to the apartment and went to sleep.

* * *

Ben woke up the next day alone in his bed, sore all over and missing the covers to the bed.

He sat up, tangled in the sheets, and looked down at the hand the spider had bitten.

The bite was gone.

Well.

Okay, then.

Ben rubbed his eyes and heaved himself out of bed.

The sheets came with him.

Ben groaned and tried to untangle himself from the sheets. How could bedsheets end up so damn tangled? It was like they were stuck to him, or something-

Wait.

Ben carefully grabbed the sheets, still wrapped around his torso and legs. He tugged.

Wow. They really were stuck.

_If Peter or May finds out, I’m never going to hear the end of this. Benjamin Parker, brought down by bedsheets and a spider bite._

Ben tried to pull the sheets away from his hands.

It didn’t work.

_Is…_

Ben lifted his hands to his face, the sheets coming along for the ride. He spread his fingers as wide as they could go and shook them furiously.

The sheets… didn’t come off.

The dream was real.

* * *

The next few weeks passed in a blur of activity. He and May wrote down everything he could remember from the dream, managed to make a makeshift costume, and started trying to figure out how Peter had made his web shooters.

“This is _impossible,_ ” Ben snarled one night, notes and fabrics spread out on the kitchen table in front of him and May, Peter off at a sleepover at Ned’s. “How did Peter _do_ this?”

“Grief?” May suggested. “Desperation?”

“How could he have been more desperate than we are? Thanos is coming, and if I can’t get this right in time to be an established hero by then, we’re going to die!”

“We’ll get this, Ben. If nothing else, we can warn the Avengers. You don’t have to be an Avenger to get them to listen to you.”

“Yes, I do!”

May ignored his outburst. “Have we tried making the shooters’ trigger a button? That might be more convenient.”

“...You know what, I think that might work.”

“Great. Let’s do this, Spider-Man.”

As they worked, Ben pretended not to notice the tears in her eyes, and she pretended not to see the fear in his.

* * *

The costume and the web shooters were finished only a month after Ben was bitten, and on his first night out, May hugged Ben close. “If you die out there,” she whispered, “I’m never going to forgive myself for helping you.”

Ben hugged her back as gently as he could. “I’ll come back. I promise.”

“You’d _better_.” May stepped back, grabbing his hand and holding it in hers. “I know that stopping muggers and petty thieves is probably going to be one of the safest things you’ll do as Spider-Man, Ben, but… please don’t forget that a mugger killed you that other time. Thanos didn’t kill you. Another person did, with one bullet.”

“I know,” Ben said. He stepped forwards and kissed her. “I’d better go. I love you.”

“Love you, Ben.”

Ben shot out a web from the web shooters, stepped out the window, and succumbed to gravity.

 _Oh,_ shit, _I did not think this through._

Ben shot out another web from his other web shooter, his arms jerking in their sockets, before he could crash into the ground or the building across the street.

He managed to maneuver himself onto the building across the street, and clung to the bricks of that building with his supernaturally sticky spider hands. With a grimace on his face, Ben turned and gave May a thumbs up, then scrambled up to the roof and perched on the ledge, trying to collect himself.

Ben took a deep breath. He was Spiderman.

Now came the hard part.

Stopping literally every other threat that could hurt people. Including Thanos.

 _How do I get myself into these situations?_ Ben wondered, shaking his head. A small smile crossed his face as he spotted Peter texting in his room, carefree and happy, probably talking to Ned. _Isn’t he supposed to be asleep? The little liar._ Not that Ben could talk- he was a forty-eight year old man leaping around in spandex.

Ben set his shoulders back and prepared to start swinging.

He was Ben Parker. He was an uncle. He was a New Yorker. He was a time traveler.

But best of all, he was Spiderman.


End file.
